Dear Comrade Huysmans!

Thank you for sending me the Paris "resolution" 76.

As I have already written to you, the conference of the RSDLP condemned the liquidators and various foreign groups 77 that are introducing disorganization into our party and represent nothing in Russia. On the one hand, those very groups who are mentioned voted for the resolution in Paris at the present time. According to an old custom, all condemned persons have the right to curse their judges for 24 hours. The persons who signed the resolution made excessively broad use of this right and perhaps even abused it.

On the other hand, there exist groups that were invited to the conference but did not wish to participate in it. Now they are "protesting" and attempting to convene another conference, calling upon the gods as witnesses that they stand for unity.

This is a very original method of unity! Let us see whether they will create anything serious in Russia. To the extent that it is easy to vote for abusive resolutions in Paris, it is equally difficult to accomplish anything real in Russia. And certainly it is not Paris, Vienna, and so on that have the right to speak in the name of Russia.

In any case, the persons who signed the Paris resolution are somewhat hasty in beginning to speak of a "split." In order to establish the existence of a split, one must establish the existence of two — at the very least! — Central Committees in Russia.

As yet this does not exist.

As concerns Citizen Plekhanov, the Central Committee informed him of the conference resolutions more than a month ago. He did not deign to reply. Therefore, at the present moment I have absolutely no idea whether Citizen Plekhanov has (and from which Central Committee) the authority as a member of the International Socialist Bureau.

If you, dear comrade, are more fortunate than I — that is, if you receive a reply from Citizen Plekhanov — then I hope that you will be kind enough to inform me of this.

With fraternal greetings.

Entirely yours, N. Lenin

1912

Translated from the French

Written in March, before the 28th

Sent from Paris to Brussels

First published in 1930

in Lenin Miscellany XIII

Printed from the manuscript